“No. Why are you working with Death’s Hand?”
She stood and dusted herself off. Ann’s color was returning to normal. “Vedae som matis doesn’t think I should tell you very much. She’s usually right about things. Look, I like you a lot, Elise. I could have drained you dry to paint that sigil, but I used mostly pig’s blood instead. We don’t have to fight. There’s enough room in the new world for both of us.”
“New world?” Elise tried to make herself sound calm, even though she was watching the doorway and mentally calculating the odds of escaping twenty fiends unarmed.
“Sure. I know you’re in Reno because of the Warrens, and you thought all the power from them would prevent your enemies from locating you remotely…right?” Ann didn’t wait for a response before continuing. “But that protection doesn’t come from the Warrens. There are angelic ruins below them.”
She already knew that, but having her suspicions confirmed made a sick kind of chill settle over her.
“So this is a takeover.”
“Vedae som matis is trapped in Hell, Elise. You know what it’s like down there? It’s…well, it’s Hell. All she needs to break through to this side is a corporeal body, and then we can build a kingdom together.” She took the stone staff out of her pocket and gave it the kind of loving look most girls would reserve for a boyfriend.
Her opinion of Ann immediately shifted from “this girl is misguided” to “this girl is insane.”
Ann stepped forward, holding out a hand. “We can still be friends. When vedae som matis takes over, she’ll need a council, and I can suggest you and Betty if…”
“If what? If I agree to be a blood donor?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve got all I needed from you. My house is done being anointed. Vedae som matis was right about that, too. Your blood is really potent.”
“You can’t use me as a vessel. I’m not a witch.”
Her smile went painfully wide. “Who says I wanted you? I poisoned James for a reason, you know.”
I am the cold kiss of Death…
Elise joined her fists together and swung, bringing both down on Ann’s head.
The witch screamed as she fell, bringing up her arms to protect herself. It wasn’t good enough. Elise kicked her in the face, and her nose snapped. Blood sprayed across the concrete.
A gray blur hurtled into the room, striking Elise in the stomach with all the power of an oncoming train. Her back slammed into the wall.
Over the fiend’s head, Elise saw Ann try to push herself up, then collapse again.
Elise kneed the demon in the stomach, pushing it away from her. She ran for the door, but the fiend grabbed at her shirt with its clawed hands. She stuck her hip out and used its own momentum to throw it over her leg. It lost balance, and Elise jumped over Ann, pausing only to pick up the staff.
It made her hands burn, so she stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans. She ran up the stairs and burst through the door to the first floor of the house.
The walls were lined with pictures. None of them featured Ann.
Something scuffled in the basement behind her.
Elise darted to the nearest room, throwing the door open. Empty bedroom. There was a bookshelf in front of the window. She opened another door—closet. Its shelves were covered in fragments of bone.
The fiend launched itself out of Ann’s room, and she dodged. It hit the wall instead, and the drywall cracked.
“Get the kopis!” Ann shrieked from the other room. “Get her!”
Elise rushed into the darkened living room. It stank of brimstone and blood, and a trio of possessed corpses sat beside the battered couch. They didn’t register Elise’s appearance, even though she recognized two of them as the ones she had fought in the cemetery the night before.
But the pair of fiends huddled in the corner in the shadow of the television, eating a bloody scrap of meat, didn’t fail to see Elise.
One of the fiends darted at her, and she backhanded it, sending it flying into the wall.
Fire burned a path down Elise’s thigh. She cried out. The second fiend flung shreds of her jeans from its claws and slashed again, but she leapt away just in time. The backs of her legs bumped into something, and she stumbled. Her thigh gave out.
Elise hit the ground. The possessed ones animated and stood, staring at her with empty eyes.
She scrambled to her feet as they lunged, kicking a fiend squarely in the face. It flew backwards with a little squeal, striking the lone window through the curtains and sliding to the floor.
Elise flung open the front door, and light flooded into the living room. The remaining fiend recoiled, covering its bulbous eyeballs with tiny scarred hands.
She hurtled outside into fresh air and freedom. She ran to the end of the street and stopped short—Ann’s house was on a hill overlooking the city, and below the hill stood Our Mother of Sorrows cemetery.
The other houses on the street were silent, seemingly unoccupied, but the sky was gray and growing darker by the minute. Black thunderheads rolled down the mountains toward the late afternoon sun. Once the sun disappeared, there would be nothing keeping the fiends from following her.
The possessed ones didn’t care about sunlight. Something scraped behind her.
They were coming.
Elise’s feet pounded against pavement. Her right twitched. The fiend’s claws hurt like a son of a bitch, and the staff in her pocket hummed with furious energy.
The street behind her grew louder. More scraping, more motion. Elise’s leg wouldn’t go as fast as she needed it to—every time she set down her foot, her leg buckled and the best she could manage was a striding limp.
She glanced over her shoulder. Three possessed ones chased her, and they were picking up speed. Worse yet, Elise could feel the demonic presence of the fiends—they were vulnerable to bright lights, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t run blind. And Ann was furious enough to make them do it.
A Jeep passed the other end of the street and stopped at the corner.
“Elise!” The Jeep backed up, made a hard turn, and pulled up alongside her backward. Anthony stared at her from the driver’s seat. “What’s going on?”
“No time to explain,” she said, grabbing the car’s frame and hauling her body up. She didn’t even wait to be fully inside the car before waving at him. “Go, Anthony!”
He adjusted his side mirror. “What are those?”
She clambered into the passenger’s seat. The sense of the servants was almost overwhelming, and she didn’t need to look to know they were coming up on the Jeep. “Drive, damn it! Drive!”
Anthony slammed his foot on the gas. The tires spun out, and the engine red-lined.
Then he found traction, and the car shot down the street. Elise was thrown back into the seat. She gripped the roll cage, twisting around to watch the street recede behind them.
He threw a hard left turn without slowing down. The Jeep felt like it was going to roll, but it barely kept its tires on the road.
The fiends couldn’t keep up. Even better, there wasn’t much traffic, so they didn’t have to stop. Elise dropped back again and ripped her jeans open even wider to see the damage. Three parallel gashes marked the side of her thigh, hip to knee. Although they burned, the wound was shallow.
“Oh God,” Anthony said, staring at her leg.
“Get to the studio, and take the back roads,” Elise ordered, reaching into the back seat to search through his junk. She found an oil-stained polo with a university logo on the breast. “Are you attached to this shirt?”
He shook his head, and she dabbed at her wounds.
“Elise, what in the heck was—shit!”
Anthony slammed on the breaks. She hit the dashboard hands-first.
She looked up in time to see a hand swipe at her over the windshield, white eyes and a pale face dripping with blood pressed against the glass.
“Don’t stop!” Elise yelled, pushing the hand aside when the servant
reached for Anthony. He slouched low in his seat. “Faster!”
The engine roared. She pulled herself up on the windshield, hauled back, and punched the servant with all her strength. He didn’t register any pain, but his one-handed grip on the roll cage weakened.
Anthony swerved, and Elise fell against the side of the Jeep. The possessed one tumbled off the hood.
Elise watched him roll down the asphalt. A truck several car lengths behind them swerved to avoid him as it turned the corner. The servant picked itself up, and then Anthony and Elise turned a corner as well. He disappeared.
“What the fuck was that?” Anthony asked as Elise plopped back down in the seat again. His chest was rising and falling rapidly as though he had been the one running. His face and knuckles were white. “That looked like—I mean—was that a zombie?”
“Not exactly. I have no idea why you were passing that street, Anthony, but thank God you were. I’m not sure I could have out-run them. I think they’re getting stronger.”
“Oh my God, they’re still back there, aren’t they? Ann lives up there! We have to go back, she might be—”
“Fuck Ann,” Elise said. “She’s fine.”
“I’m going to take your word for it. I have seen the weirdest shit today,” Anthony said. “Do you want to tell me what’s the hell is going on?”
She studied the strong line of his nose and jaw in profile. He was focusing on the road, but the veins standing out on his neck belied how much of an effort it was for him not to stare at Elise.
“You know how you were saying you wanted to be a part of my life?” she asked. He nodded, knuckles white. “Wish granted. Now get me back to the studio.”
Part Five: The Twelfth Hour
GUATEMALA – AUGUST 2004
When James woke up in the condo, he was partially healed, and totally alone. Elise’s swords were gone.
He wasn’t sure if it was instinct or Elise’s history of getting into trouble that told him something was wrong, but he didn’t bother waiting for her to return. He stuffed what was left of his Book of Shadows into a bag, slung it over his shoulder, and hobbled out the door with his makeshift crutch. He could barely feel his knee as magic knit the ligaments back together. Every time he took a step, it tried to buckle under him.
Worse yet, it was still raining, and as dark as night even though it was afternoon. The ground was slick and muddy. But slowly, deliberately, he made his way toward town.
He tensed when he saw two figures coming up the road toward him. When they drew close enough for him to realize they were human, he still didn’t relax.
One of the men was built like a cinderblock, and the other was a boy with a shotgun strapped to his back and nervous eyes. “Where’s Elise?” asked the first without prelude.
“Who are you?” James asked, raising his voice to be heard over the blasting wind.
“The name’s Bryce.” The cinderblock jerked his thumb at the other man. “This is Diego. McIntyre said Elise needs our help. Here we are.”
So they were kopides. Both of them. “I thought McIntyre was coming himself.”
“He couldn’t make it,” Diego said with an accent so thick that James barely understood him.
“Well, you’re too late. She’s already gone. She’s gone into the undercity—looking for that clock.”
“So she’s dead,” Bryce said.
James’s fist clenched on his walking stick. “No. She’s alive.” He would know the instant she died. It hadn’t happened. Not yet. “But that could change quickly. We have to find her.”
Bryce looked excited at the prospect of going into the undercity. He grinned, and James saw that he was missing most of his teeth. His skin had the tough, scarred look of an old farmer even though he couldn’t have been thirty yet.
“Fucking fantastic,” he said. “Tell us what to do.”
He opened his mouth to respond.
James!
Pain flared down his flesh. Burning silver spikes flayed his skin, baring his bones as the jungle blurred and darkened around him.
With a roar of pain, James staggered. A pair of hands kept him from falling.
“The hell—?” someone said.
But James was lost in a black pit of agony. Smoke burned his lungs. Hot stone dug into his spine, and metal bit his wrists, chafing until they went slick with blood.
No. Not his wrists.
A fist struck him across the face. His vision cleared in time to see Bryce rearing above him with his hand raised for another blow. “Stop,” James said with a shudder. Elise’s silent cries echoed through him. He hadn’t even know she could scream.
Bryce lifted him and set him on his feet like he was a child. Diego gave James his dropped crutch.
“What’s wrong with you?” Bryce asked warily. His hands flexed as he stared around at the trees, as though waiting to be attacked.
“It’s Elise. Something is happening to her. She’s—”
The pain blazed again.
James…James…
She was chained. Bleeding.
“What should we do? Tell us how to help,” Diego said. His hands were trembling.
Help? They wanted to help?
He took a moment to size them up. Bryce looked as dumb as the mud beneath his feet, but he was pure muscle. Diego wouldn’t be nearly so useful—he was too scared. He wouldn’t last long in the undercity, and James wouldn’t make it far with his ruined knee, either. And he wanted that shotgun.
“Sorry about this,” James said.
He dropped his walking stick, pulled a slip of paper from the Book of Shadows, and seized Diego’s arm.
Electricity leaped between them. Diego’s skin turned ashen gray, and he collapsed, dragging them both to the ground. Bryce shouted and drew his gun, but James held up his hands.
“He’s fine,” James said. “He’ll be okay. He’s unconscious.”
Careful to stay out of arm’s reach, Bryce checked Diego’s pulse. “What did you do to him?”
“I borrowed his strength to heal myself.” And to prove it, he stood up—slowly, no need to tempt the trigger finger—and stripped the bandages from his knee. It didn’t hurt anymore.
James expected him to argue. There were so few living witches that rivaled his power that most people weren’t aware such healing was even possible. But Bryce looked angry, not disbelieving. “Are you nuts?” he asked. “Now there’s only two of us!”
“And I wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere without healing first. Tell me: would you rather descend toward almost certain death with a scared boy, or the aspis who just defeated him with a single touch?”
Bryce couldn’t seem to find a reason to argue.
Elise had no idea that she could hurt so much without passing out. Time made no sense anymore. Had it been minutes? Hours? Years?
Had the clock struck twelve yet?
Brilliant white pain burned through her bones. Blood raced down her skin from a thousand shallow cuts.
She was a roast pig on a spit. She was a rabbit being skinned. Pillars of fire raced along her spine, arced through the sky, scorched the earth.
When she thought it couldn’t hurt worse, the knife dug in somewhere new, and it did.
“Amazing how well kopides heal,” a voice said. “You may not even scar.”
The words jangled in her ears. She screamed and screamed. Blood swirled past her head, filling the cracks in the stone, and flashes of black blurred her vision.
The tip of a stone knife scraped against her breastbone.
You may not even scar.
Her head swam. She had no blood. No skin.
The goddess of death held something over her, and it dripped warmth on her face, and Elise thought she recognized the strip of pink dotted by freckles and—oh God.
The world couldn’t end soon enough.
James ran through the jungle. He didn’t see with his eyes; he saw with Elise’s. He saw a limp hand in front of her on the floor. He saw pooling blood
. He saw iron chains and bare, dirty feet.
Pain. So much pain.
He muttered under his breath as he ran on his repaired knee, even though he wasn’t sure she could hear. “I’m coming—hold on—stay awake—”
Bryce crashed gracelessly through the trees behind him, panting and swearing. Like many bulky, muscled men, he didn’t seem to have focused on his cardio health. He couldn’t keep up.
The rain poured around them, salty-sweet like the ocean. Trees swayed in the wind. James’s shirt stuck to his back, and he hugged the shotgun to his chest to keep from catching on the foliage.
Where was she?
James tried to follow the feelings Elise radiated, but it was difficult. Her mind made no sense to him. Maybe if they had been piggybacked—maybe if she wasn’t in so much pain—
A mark on a tree caught his eye. “Wait!” James called.
Bryce stopped and leaned on his knees, gasping for air. “What?”
A signpost was carved into the trunk of the tree. It was a marker from one demon to another, indicating the direction of the undercity.
His eyes tracked the signpost to the next tree, and the next. There were small marks all around him. They led back toward town. How could he have missed them?
“This way,” James said.
He doubled back, climbing toward the road. Bryce followed as well as he could. “Hey!” he shouted. “We got company!”
James turned. It was hard to see through the motion of the trees in the wind, but something was moving higher on the mountain. Dark shapes.
“Demons?” James called back.
“A whole fucking century of ‘em!”
He ran faster, the Book of Shadows bouncing on his back in its bag. He didn’t like his odds against a centuria of demons—over eighty of them—not even with Bryce’s help.
As he followed the marks closer to town, he began to hear yelps and howls. They were getting closer.
“It’s in there,” he shouted, pointing at a shop the markers indicated as the entrance. Bryce was hurrying to catch up, but he was still a hundred meters back. “I’m going down! Can you hold them off?”
Demons & Djinn: Nine Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Novels Featuring Demons, Djinn, and other Bad Boys of the Underworld Page 181
